


J’adoube

by GalaxyRise489



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Erik bakes a cake, Erik isn’t a very good baker, Genosha, M/M, daily writing challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 10:44:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20208451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GalaxyRise489/pseuds/GalaxyRise489
Summary: Somewhere in the first year after the ending of Dark Phoenix, Erik decides to bake a cake. He fails. And then he succeeds.





	J’adoube

**Author's Note:**

> j'adoube : I adjust —used in chess when adjusting a piece without intending to move it.

Erik looked skeptically at the oven. It wasn’t billowing smoke, nothing appeared charred, and it actually smelled decent. 

On their last trip to America, Charles had dragged Erik to a grocery store. Erik saw a kit to make a chess board shaped cake, complete with chocolate chess pieces while he was wandering around. He snuck the kit back, but it sat in the communal kitchen on Genosha forgotten for months. 

Until now. 

He took the cake out of the oven, set it on the counter and looked at the bowl of frosting. The cake actually looked like it was supposed to, flat and square. And wasn’t burnt. All it needed was to be frosted and to have the chocolate squares put on it. Frosting first. 

If someone had walked in two minutes later, they would have found a frustrated Magneto, covered in white frosting, and a baking pan crumpled in the corner along with a bowl, still half full of frosting also crumpled. Luckily for Erik, no one walked in. No matter how influential the leader, or how terrifying the villain, it’s near impossible to take someone seriously when they are covered in cake frosting. 

He realized his error as the frosting liquified and dropped off the edges of the cake. For a split second, he allowed rage to consume him and crushed the bowl holding the remainder of the frosting. When you crush a small bowl full of frosting, that frosting needs to go somewhere. In this case, that somewhere was the face and chest of one Erik Lehnsherr. 

“The things I do for you, Charles” Erik muttered to himself as he stalked over to the large shelving unit and grabbed another tin of frosting. Time to try again now that the cake was cooler. Slowly, and with razor sharp precision he frosted all sides of the cake and began to lay down the chocolate squares that would make the chess board. 

The first of which promptly began to perspire and slowly leak onto the rest of the cake. Fine. Not cool enough yet. Erik snatched the offending piece of chocolate off the cake and re-frosted the area. 

What felt like hours later, Erik had finally arranged the squares, and not a single one had melted. The chess pieces, both white and dark chocolate sat in the fridge. He took a few of the pawns out and placed them on the board, checking from all angles to make sure they looked right. 

It looked like as much of a chess board as the one on the packaging, which he was considering a success. 

Now to safely get the cake back to his quarters. 

The twelve people who saw Magneto striding across the courtyard flanked by a cake made no indication that anything about the situation was out of the ordinary. In the year or so since Charles Xavier had come to Genosha, most of the residents had come to realize that their leader did strange things to make his (former) enemy happy. Even the ones who had grumbled about Xavier’s arrival had softened when they saw him and Magneto together. And it was very clear why, when creating their society, Magneto had said that in addition to mutant marriage being legal, gay marriage was as well. 

Erik and the cake levitated into his quarters and he placed it on his table. Charles was… somewhere. 

Five minutes later when the other man rolled into the room he had a grin plastered on his face, making Erik think that he might have been projecting cake excitement too hard. 

“You have something for me, old friend?” Charles asked, looking directly at the cake, which was already set up for a game. 

Erik’s eyes flicked from Charles to the cake and back. He wasn’t one for grand romantic gestures. “Yeah, cake. It looks, uh, like a chess board so I thought that we could-“ he stopped short when he realized that Charles had already moved to the white side of the board and moved a pawn. 

They still lived for stolen moments like this, even though they didn’t actually need to steal them. Chess and banter served as reminders of their past lives, and promises for the future. 

Erik captured one of Charles’s bishops with a knight and held onto the piece a bit too long. When he put it down, the chocolate covered his hand. He made to move a paper towel holder over to the table, but Charles stopped him with a gentle nudge to his mind. Charles took Erik’s hand in his own and slowly sucked a finger into his mouth, cleaning it thoroughly, before releasing with a lewd pop and moving to the next one. 

Charles grinned as he reached across the board and picked up Erik’s king. “Checkmate” he breathed and bit the top off the piece.


End file.
